Two Awesome Endings

The English teacher in my 11 yo daughter’s new school decided to play a game. “I’ll tell the first line of a story, and then we’ll go round the class. Each student should add one (and only one) line to the story”.

 

The teacher started with, “As I lay asleep at night, I heard a loud bang.” The first kid promptly responded, “I don’t know how to continue, m’am”. Really? Already? Minus one.

 

Thankfully, the next kid had seen plenty of TV. “I got out of bed to check what had caused the noise.” Good. “I saw there were burglars with guns.” Next. “I went back and got back my nerve gun.” Continue. “I then realized the burglars were in the neighbor’s house, not mine”. What?! The teacher accepted this outrageous line, probably because it added a कहानी में twist… The tale continued its way across the class. Abruptly, one kid decided to end it all, “Then I died”, he announced. The end.

 

Sometimes, a bad ending can ruin a great story or movie. In this case, it made an amusing-at-times, ok-at-others tale into a hilarious one.

~~

 

The game was repeated a few days later. The teacher started with, “I woke that morning at 5 o’clock”. The first kid said, “I had a flight to catch to go to my cousin’s wedding in Ahmedabad”. Continue. “I went to the wedding when suddenly a gang of masked men barged in”. Proceed. “They tied up all the guests, including me”. Next. “Luckily, I had a knife with me”. Go on. “I used the knife to free myself, and went and stabbed one of the goondas”. Too violent. “Ok then, I used the knife to free myself and escaped from the wedding hall”.

 

The tale continued. “I went to the airport.” Ok. “The flight back home got hijacked by masked men”. C’mon, not those masked men again. “Ok, ok, I reached home safely and went to play on the PS4 with my friends.” (PS4 – PlayStation 4 is a video game console). Next. I totally did not see this ending that the next kid came up with – “It turned out my friends were the masked men at the wedding in Ahmedabad”.

~~

 

During assembly, when the principal asked what the kids wanted to be when they grew up, these were the loud responses that my daughter remembered with glee. Toilet cleaner. And ice-cream taster. But the one she enjoyed the most was the muffled answer from one of her classmates – Drug dealer.

 

Given the creativity with that story telling activity, I’m surprised none of them thought of becoming a writer of fiction. Or a script writer for the movies. Then again, I guess that’s too tame when one has the option of becoming a drug dealer.

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